


(the feeling that) you're never all alone

by flyingthesky



Series: Banned Together 2020 [10]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson, Dear Evan Hansen - Val Emmich
Genre: (see notes for details), Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Canon Character of Color, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gender Dysphoria, Pre-Relationship, Trans Female Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingthesky/pseuds/flyingthesky
Summary: “My name,” hot ghost boy says, still smiling. “You can call me Migo. Or Miguel, if you prefer.”“I don’t really care what your name is.” That’s a lie. Connor cares alotabout what Miguel-call-me-Migo’s name is. “I just want you out of my room.”
Series: Banned Together 2020 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760965
Kudos: 4





	(the feeling that) you're never all alone

**Author's Note:**

> i have never in my life written something for the enjoyment of other people and i wasn't about to start now. this is a mediator au for “normalizes trans lives” on my [banned together bingo](https://bannedtogetherbingo2020.tumblr.com/) card because sometimes the fact that you're trans doesn't even make top ten on your list of reasons why your life is a mess. also it's just lowkey a bmc and watt crossover but that's so in the background i thought tagging it would be misleading.
> 
> the transphobia warnings are in the end notes. it's not major, but cis people gonna be cis people.

Stepping off the plane, the only thing Connor can think is that New York was never this _bright_.

It takes a second for her eyes to adjust, even wearing the sunglasses she bought before this move, because everything in California glitters like it’s made of reflective metal. When she’s finally able to see, though, it’s easy to track down her mom and her new family. Cynthia is enthusiastically waving from where she’s standing next to the loser she married and his children. Zoe elbows Connor in the ribs.

“Play nice,” Zoe hisses. “Mom’s really happy and wants us to be happy.”

“I’m a goddamn ray of sunshine,” Connor says. “I know how to behave myself.”

Raising an eyebrow, Zoe tips her head in Cynthia’s direction and Connor resists the urge to shove her sister. She can totally play nice. She can make a great first impression on her stupid new siblings, and everything will be fine. It’s not like her mother uprooted the family because she met a hot guy and Connor’s maybe a little pissed about it.

“Zoe, Connor!” Cynthia is still waving like a madwoman, and Zoe hitches her backpack higher onto her shoulder before walking toward their new family. Connor reluctantly follows. “You girls finally made it.”

Cynthia envelopes Zoe and Connor in a hug, and it makes something in Connor uncoil. She breathes out and thinks that maybe this won’t be so bad. Once Cynthia lets them go, she gestures toward her new husband and his two kids. Connor met them briefly at the wedding and they’re okay. She can think of worse things than having Jeremy as a brother, and it’s nice to have another sister, even if Connor would never say that out loud. Riley can be a little high-strung, though, so Connor’s unsure of how she’ll get along with her.

“Did you have—no, why would you have, that’s. I mean. Welcome to California, guys!” Jeremy smiles, and it looks like someone’s holding a gun to his head. “Or, uh. Girls? No, wait. I didn’t mean. I just. You know!”

“Breathe, Jer-bear.” Riley touches Jeremy’s arm and then smiles at them. She smiles like her life depends on it. “We just finished setting up your rooms yesterday, I really hope you like them.”

Normally, Connor would say something rude. Zoe knows how to shake off Connor’s comments because she has practice figuring out which ones Connor means and which ones she’s just saying out of anger. Jeremy and Riley don’t have that skill yet, so instead she just smiles and lets Zoe take care of the part where they all make nice and pretend they don’t hate everything about the series of events that have led to this moment.

Once they’re in the car, hurtling toward home at some truly inadvisable speeds Connor thinks she might just have to get used to, the conversation turns to other things. Mostly things about the renovations they’ve done on the home. That’s what Mr. Heere does for a living, so of course he did work on the house he bought to house his new family. What Connor failed to catch, when Cynthia told her that Mr. Heere worked in construction, was that apparently he doesn’t just do any kind of construction. He specifically deals with historical reconstruction.

“Is the damn house historical?” Connor can’t deal with this. She really, _really_ thought that she’d be able to leave her problems behind in New York. The dead ones, anyway. “Are we moving into a goddamn colonialist nightmare house?”

“Language, Connie.” Cynthia’s decided the best way to be supportive of Connor is by trying out new names for her, because still hasn’t told her mother what she’s changing her name to. Connie is Cynthia’s current favorite, which means Connor sort of hates it. “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. I know you’re not fond of houses with history, but I’m sure you’ll love it when you see it!”

“Mom! I’ve told you like a thousand times I hate old houses!” In the very back of her mind, Connor’s aware she’s doing the thing. The thing where she gets really upset and then it’s hard to breathe and then she feels like crying. “You already made me move across the country for my senior year instead of staying with grandma, ruining my entire life and keeping me from all my friends, and now you’re telling me we’re probably going to be living on some ancient Indian burial ground? Can you just—you’re always like this! You never goddamn think about anyone else, Cynthia, because you’re convinced you know what’s best for us!”

The fact of the matter is that Connor hates old houses for good reason beyond the ones she normally yelled at her mother in situations like this. Old houses have long histories and the longer a place’s history is? The more likely that place has ghosts and, given the state of the American government at any point in its short but horrific career, the more likely it is that those ghosts aren’t just sticking around because they have nothing better to do.

Unfortunately for Connor, old houses with unhappy ghosts means there’s _work_ to be done, and she really doesn’t want to try and explain a chicken blood ritual to her mom when it turned out their house is infested with angry poltergeists only Connor can see who all immediately want to attack her instead of peacefully going into the light or whatever the hell it is that happens to ghosts. 

“Oh, grow up, Connor!” Zoe’s turned in her seat to glare at him. “You’re too old to be believing in stupid things like ghosts and ‘negative energy’ or whatever it is that freaks you out about old houses. Just put your crystals out and draw a pentagram in your carpet.”

“It’s not stupid—just because you think you’ve got everything figured out, Little Miss Perfect, doesn’t mean that there’s not compelling evidence for the supernatural.” Sometimes, Connor wishes she could just say that she sees ghosts. Except that wouldn’t shut Zoe up, it would just make Cynthia send her to therapy. “Forgive me for not wanting to live on a potential graveyard!”

“Girls,” Cynthia says, and Connor can hear the panic seeping into her voice. God, that’s right. They’re supposed to be playing nice. Well, this was bound to happen sooner or later. “I think we should all calm down.”

“Hey,” Jeremy says, voice quiet, “breathe. You’re, um. I think you’re having a panic attack?”

The problem with being told to breathe is that breathing isn’t something you think about and the more you think about it, the harder it becomes. Connor gasps, trying to pull air into her lungs, and it feels like someone is sitting on her chest. She feels Jeremy’s hand on her shoulder and tries to flinch away, but there’s nowhere to go.

“Listen to me, okay?” Jeremy’s voice is still quiet, calm. “Breathe in. Breathe out.”

It’s a struggle, but Connor follows along with Jeremy’s voice. She breathes in and then out. In and then out. Slowly but surely, the weight lifts from her chest and then she’s breathing normally. When she opens her eyes again, Jeremy is looking at her. There’s concern in his eyes, and Connor tries to smile so it eases.

“Thanks.” Her voice is raspy, and she kind of hates it. It’s the thing she likes least about herself. “Sorry about that.”

“Oh, no problem. It, uh. I mean. Riley has them too. Panic attacks? So.” It’s kind of hard to piece together what Jeremy is trying to say at any given moment, but Connor thinks she gets it. He’s saying that it’s normal. “You know, I mean. It’s not good, but. It’s good that. What I’m trying to say is—sorry, I’ll just. Shut up.”

“Jeremy’s trying to say we understand.” Riley’s voice is chipper, and Connor squints at her. There’s something tight around her eyes, and Connor thinks maybe she’s not as put together as she seems. She holds out a water bottle. “Would you like some water?”

Connor takes the water bottle from Riley, muttering thanks, and sips at it gingerly. It’s been ten minutes and she’s already messed up Cynthia’s careful plans for being one big, happy family. The rest of the drive to the house passes silently, the ocean stretching out forever as they drive by it. Sun glints off the waves, brighter and shinier than the ocean on the East Coast, and Connor fixates on it because she doesn’t know what else to do.

Her first thought about the house is that it’s beautiful. Without even being told, Connor knows Cynthia chose the color scheme. Lovely and three stories high, the facade is painted in blue with cream and white accents. It gives the house a airy, beachy feel that seems incongruous with the pine trees shading the area and Connor hates to admit that Cynthia did a good job. Everything about the house seems like something that could be on a postcard, lovely and perfect.

There’s absolutely nothing Connor wants less than to go inside.

Of course, she does. She slings her backpack up on her shoulder and strides into the house, letting Cynthia give her and Zoe a tour. The inside of the house is light and airy too, done up in more blue and cream and white with large windows that let in lots of natural light. It’s beautiful, like something out of an interior design catalog, and Connor feels bad about her freak out earlier. Especially since for the first time in their lives, she and Zoe have separate rooms and don’t have to deal with being in each other’s space.

“I decorated it myself,” Cynthia says when she shows Connor into her room. “I figured I’d let you set up all your little knickknacks yourself, but there’s shelves over there for you to put them on. Oh! And you have your own bathroom. Isn’t that nice?”

It is nice, for a certain definition of nice. The whole thing is way too froufrou and girly for Connor’s tastes, but she understands this was her mother showing understanding and trying to be helpful. Like what Connor needs to be a real girl is for her bedroom to look like something the protagonist of a CW drama would live in. Everything about the room is fine, except for the extremely beautiful and extremely not alive guy sitting on her window seat.

“Connie?” Cynthia sounds concerned, but Connor can’t do much about that right now. She has bigger problems. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” Connor says absently, tearing her eyes away from the ghost in her bedroom to smile at her mom. “It’s great. Do you think I have time to unpack some stuff before dinner?”

“Of course. I’ll let you settle in.”

Cynthia closes the door behind her when she leaves, and Connor drops her backpack on the ground. Sighing, she sits on the edge of her bed and stares straight at the ghost. Better to get this over with as soon as possible. God, she hates being able to see ghosts.

“Alright, who the hell are you and what are you doing in my bedroom?”

Startled, the guy looks around wildly for a moment. If this hadn’t happened to her so many times before, Connor would be mildly offended by the way that he even looks over his shoulder to check that nobody’s outside. When he finally looks back at her, eyes wild, he whispers _nombre de dios_. Connor rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, God’s not gonna do much for you.” Leaning back on her hands, Connor takes in the decidedly old-timey clothes the guy is wearing. “Thought you’d figure that out in the, what? Hundred fifty or whatever years it’s been since you bit it.”

“Bit what?” The guy blinks, genuinely confused. His voice sounds hoarse, like it hasn’t been used for a while. “I don’t understand.”

“Kicked the bucket, croaked, cashed in your chips, popped off, started pushing daises.” It’s clear that the more Connor talks, the more confused the guy becomes. So, with an exasperated sigh, Connor says: “You know, died.”

“Oh.” Dead guy blinks at her. “I don’t—nobody has ever been able to see me, not in all the years I’ve been here. How do you—”

“I really don’t have time for this.” Connor flops backward onto the bed and stares up at the cream canopy with tiny blue stars embroidered onto it. It’s really more Zoe’s thing than hers, but she appreciates the gesture. “What’s your deal? Why are you still here, in my bedroom?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Getting up off the bed, Connor decidedly does not look at the way dead guy’s hair is slightly curly or the way his shirt pulls across his shoulders. Changing her gender didn’t actually change the types of people she’s attracted to, it just made that attraction socially acceptable. Except this guy sitting in her bedroom is a ghost and there’s nothing socially acceptable about that, as Connor’s frequently discovered over the years. She goes over to one of the neatly stacked and labeled boxes and pulls her pocket knife from her skirt before slicing it open. It’s her crystals and other “mystical nonsense,” as Zoe usually put it, and Connor methodically starts putting them on the bookshelf Cynthia added to her room.

“People who are stuck in this plane of existence like you are stuck for a reason,” Connor tells hot ghost boy, “and I’m the girl who helps them move on. So, what’s your deal? Scorned lover? Shot in a duel? Trampled by horses? Help me out, _amigo_.”

“It’s Migo, actually.”

“What?”

There’s pure mischief in hot ghost boy’s eyes when Connor looks over her shoulder at him. She wills herself not to react, because her skirt’s tight and she doesn’t want to deal with that conversation. Not with a two hundred or whatever year old ghost who’s dangerously attractive and sitting in her window seat.

“My name,” hot ghost boy says, still smiling. “You can call me Migo. Or Miguel, if you prefer.”

“I don’t really care what your name is.” That’s a lie. Connor cares a _lot_ about what Miguel-call-me-Migo’s name is. “I just want you out of my room.”

“This is my room.” Miguel’s tone is playful when he says it, eyes still sparkling, and Connor would like nothing more than for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She can’t deal with how hot this ghost is. “I was here first, so perhaps you should leave.”

“Much as I’d like to, I can’t and sharing with some long-dead cowboy isn’t really my style.”

“I’m no _vaquero_ ,” Miguel says. His eyes narrow, and Connor barely has time to feel the drop in temperature before her bookshelves are shaking. “And I will not bow to you, _chica_.”

The pocket knife is still in her hand, and Connor closes the space between her and Miguel in three steps. She holds the knife to his throat, her fingers twisting the fabric of his shirt between her fingers, and channels all her anger at being forced to move across the country to this stupid, _stupid_ house into looking as threatening as possible.

“Do not,” she snarls, “call me _chica_. I don’t care if you were here first, and I don’t care how long you’ve been here. This is _my_ room now.”

Miguel’s mouth falls open, like he meant to say something, but he’s too shocked to manage. In the moment after her threat, Connor realizes this is probably the first time Miguel’s been touched in over a hundred years. He looks shocked. Most ghosts are the first time they realize the normal rules don’t apply to Connor. She can see them, she can hear them, and she can _touch_ them.

“Do you—I’m sorry.” Miguel’s brows have drawn together, like he’s trying to work something out. “Is it that you prefer to be addressed as a man?”

“Do I look like a man to you?” There’s barely concealed fury rippling through Connor. She knows that explaining herself to a century old ghost is probably a futile endeavor, but she hates it. Every time someone questions her, she feels like a fraud. “Does anything about this room indicate I’m a man?”

“I’ve known many men who dress like women but are still men.” Miguel shrugs, like that’s just a fact of life. “I also know men who were born women. You took issue with being called _chica_ , so I apologize if I was rude. I didn’t mean to assume.”

It’s Connor’s turn to be shocked, apparently. She sits on the edge of her bed, staring at Miguel for a moment while she tries to process what he’s said. The easy way he said it, like it was normal and there wasn’t anything wrong with either of those things, feels like being stabbed in the heart. How can a ghost from ye olde west be so understanding when most people she knows struggle with what she’s known for years?

“You have it backwards. I’m female,” Connor finds herself saying, “but I wasn’t born that way. I—I just have bad memories associated with being called _chica_.”

“Bad memories” is an understatement, but explaining further is more raw than Connor wants to be with a ghost she barely knows. Her fingers tighten around the pocket knife as she squeezes her eyes shut. She’s not going to cry. Not in front of a stupid hot ghost. Not about this.

“I understand.” Miguel’s expression goes soft and sad, and all the fight drains out of Connor. She just doesn’t have the energy to fight this ghost. “My _tía_ was like you and it’s harder. Men who were born woman is something people understand. There’s a power and agency in being a man, so it’s easier to explain away for them. They don’t understand that who you are in your heart is not who you see in the mirror. There’s no reason for it.”

Even though Connor can fight ghosts and send them to whatever waits for them after they die, she’s never been good at dealing with her emotions. Her response to stress is crying and she can’t help herself from doing that now. When she’s feeling cynical, the fact she cries all the time is the biggest reason she’s a girl. She’s just an emotional wreck all the time, and stress makes it worse until all her body can do is cry.

She doesn’t want to be here, in California. She doesn’t want to introduce herself to an entire class of new people in two months and wait for them to figure out she’s different. She doesn’t want to deal with Zoe’s perfection and her own inadequacy. She doesn’t want to have a stupid hot ghost in her room. She doesn’t want _anything_ that’s happened in the last 24 hours and the stress of it is getting to her.

“Oh, _quierda_.” The bed doesn’t move, but Connor can feel Miguel sit down next to her all the same. His arm wraps around her shoulders and pulls her in close. “It’s okay. Let it all out.”

Much as she doesn’t want to—crying on a ghost is not her idea of a good time—Connor can’t help it. Life has sucked since her mom divorced Larry, and she doesn’t like the feeling of being cast aside again for someone else’s happiness. What about her? Nobody seems to care about what makes _her_ happy. Nobody’s cared about her being happy in a long time, Connor thinks.

“I want to go home,” Connor whispers. She sniffles, drying her eyes with the collar of her t-shirt. “I hate it here.”

“Everyone feels that way when they first arrive.” There’s a chill across her shoulder, where Miguel’s fingers are squeezing gently. “You might come to see the beauty of it if you stay. I could show you some of my favorite places—not everything here has changed as much as you might think.”

Yeah, right. Like Connor’s going to let a ghost nobody else can see show her around town. That’s a recipe for getting called crazy—as if she doesn’t have enough to deal with being the new kid in town. It’s still nice of him to offer, though, and suddenly Connor feels a little bad about the way she handled their earlier interaction.

“My name’s Cecelia,” she says instead. It’s the first time she’s told anyone her new name. The paperwork for changing it is still going through, but it’ll be done before the first day of school and then at least Cecelia won’t have to deal with people dead naming her. She doesn’t think she could handle that on top of everything else going on. “You can call me Cece.”

“Cecelia suits you better.” Gently, Miguel brushes her hair away from her face. “She’s the patron saint of music, you know.”

Wikipedia told her that, but it’s nice to hear it from Miguel too. Not that Cecelia’s religious—Cynthia’s never been particularly religious, and neither was Larry—but she likes knowing about religion. She likes the idea of someone looking out for her, even if she knows it’s not true.

Sometimes pretending things are true is as good as them actually being true.

**Author's Note:**

> the transphobia within this fic comes in the form of accepting cis people messing up. in one instance, a character refers to the trans character in question as "dude" before apologizing and in another the character's mother does several things which are meant to be affirming for the character but are kind of just transphobic because they're attempts at forcing the character to be girly, which she isn't. and then finally, a character accidentally misgenders the trans character by way of trying to be affirming about her gender before apologizing.


End file.
